LAS VEGAS – If Derek Brunson’s road to the UFC were a physical one, it’d probably resemble something out of a post-apocalyptic movie with burning cars and smoking craters littered about.

The UFC 155 main-card fighter and promotional newcomer has been dealt one setback after another in the most trying year of his life.

However, Brunson (9-2 MMA, 0-0 UFC) hopes it’ll end on a positive note when he meets fellow middleweight Chris Leben (22-8 MMA, 12-7 UFC) on Saturday at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. They kick off the night’s pay-per-view main card following prelims on FX and Facebook.

“It’s a great fight stylistically,” Brunson, who took the fight on 10 days’ notice for injured Karlos Vemola, told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “Obviously I’d like to have more time to prepare. I took it short-notice. But I did a lot of preparation even when I didn’t have fights (lined up).”

Casual fans may know Brunson’s name from his time in Strikeforce. In fact, it was his “crappy” contract with the organization that contributed to one of the year’s biggest disappointments. UFC and FX officials actually picked Brunson to compete on the recently concluded 16th season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” but just three hours away from his elimination-round fight this past summer, he got the bad news that his Strikeforce contract would prohibit his participation.

“This producer came up, and she had tears in her eyes,” he said. “She was like, ‘This is the worst news I ever had to tell somebody.’ She said she was sorry. ‘We tried to work it until the last minute, but we just couldn’t get it done.'”

And like that, Brunson was bounced from the reality series. But it was hardly the only setback of the year. Back in January, Brunson began his training camp with Greg Jackson for a March Strikeforce bout with Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza. But two days before camp, one of his two daughters was hospitalized, and Brunson flew back home to be with her. His daughter recovered, but his run of bad luck didn’t.

A couple weeks before the Souza fight, the Ohio Athletic Commission nixed his participation because he failed an eye exam. His manager then told him he had two non-Strikeforce fights lined up, but both fell apart. So did a June Strikeforce bout. And he had already quit his counseling/mentoring job to focus full-time on his fighting career, and he saw his bank account dwindle while one booking after another fell apart.

So when officials from the fledgling ShoFight organization called and offered him a fight with former UFC fighter Kendall Grove on three days’ notice, he took it.

“It was stupid, and I didn’t even want to take the fight … but I needed to make money,” said Brunson, an NCAA Division II All-American wrestler. “So I took the fight. I did everything I could on four days’ notice. I dominated the kid every round.”

Considering his run of bad luck, it probably comes as no surprise that he lost a highly questionable split decision, which was aided by the referee’s baffling standup in the third round.

It marked his first career loss, so by the time an August rebooking with Souza rolled around, Brunson was hardly in the right frame of mind for the Strikeforce fight.

“I was just over-analyzing everything and was overaggressive,” he said.

And Souza knocked him out in 41 seconds.

Brunson, though, then got some good news. Despite his two-fight skid, he was told he’d be one of the Strikeforce fighters imported into the UFC because his former home was closing shop.

It was great news for Brunson, and it gave him the opportunity to wait and choose the right fight. Yet, he opted to go ahead with the Leben bout and agreed to fight a 19-time UFC veteran with one-punch knockout power on less than a few weeks’ notice.

“I don’t really look at it like that,” he said. “A fight is a fight. The UFC is the standard and the biggest organization, and everybody dreams of getting to the UFC. But at the end of the day, when you get in that cage, it’s time to fight.

“I get excited about fighting Chris Leben, but it’s not like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Chris Leben!’ … But when it comes to jitters, it doesn’t matter. He’ll be across the cage from me, and it’ll be time to go.”

The Latest

Sure, UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey ran through yet another opponent in less than a minute, but that wasn’t the only story that mattered at UFC 190. Relive the memorable moments from Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena.

Since the early days when the sport was anything but a mainstream endeavor, the MMA industry has thrived and survived through various websites, forums and, perhaps most importantly, social-media platforms.

In this week’s Trading Shots, Danny Downes and Ben Fowlkes look at Ronda Rousey’s 34-second victory over Bethe Correia at UFC 190 and try to put it into terms that capture the moment without getting swept away by it.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?